Islamist Boko Haram insurgents overran most of a northeastern Nigerian town today after hours of fighting that killed scores and displaced thousands of residents.
The Islamists launched an attack on the town of Bama, 70 km from the Borno state capital of Maiduguri, yesterday. They were initially repelled but came back in greater numbers overnight, witnesses said.
A Nigerian defence spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. A security source said there were heavy casualties on both sides and one said at least 5,000 people had fled the town.
In a bungled air strike, several Nigerian troops were killed at the Bama armoury by a war plane targeting the insurgents, a soldier on the ground told Reuters.
Two months after Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria declared the area they seized an Islamic caliphate, Boko Haram has also for the first time explicitly laid claim to territory it says it controls in parts of northeast Nigeria.
They captured the remote hilly farming town of Gwoza, along the Cameroon border, during fighting last month. The group's leader Abubakar Shekau in a video declared it a "Muslim territory" that would be ruled by strict Islamic law.
Shekau’s forces have killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands since launching an uprising in 2009 to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Nigeria. They are regarded as the biggest security threat to Nigeria, which is Africa’s top oil producer.
"When we started hearing gunshots, everybody was confused. There was firing from different directions. We just ran to the outskirts of town," Bukar Auwalu, a trader who fled with his wife, three children and brother, said.
“There were military helicopters and a fighter jet. We slept in the bush on the outskirts of town. We can’t go back.”
Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said 9,000 people fleeing violence in Nigeria's northeast had arrived in Cameroon's Far North region in the past 10 days.
“Even upon arrival in Cameroon, they are not necessarily out of harm’s way. On Sunday, insurgents attacked Kerawa town inside Cameroon, forcing refugees and some local residents to flee further inland,” he said in a briefing note.
Another 2,000 had crossed into Niger, which is already hosting some 50,000 refugees who have fled from fighting since May 2013. Some 645,000 people are internally displaced in Nigeria.
Cameroon state radio said today it had killed 40 Boko Haram insurgents during an an attempted incursion by the militants the previous day.
Reuters